Movies: Past, present and future

Carey Mulligan: 'The Great Gatsby' gets me nervous too

November 23, 2011 | 5:16pm

Carey Mulligan has two buzzy, and monosyllabic, films this fall in “Drive” and “Shame.” But she’s currently taking on a project that has its own share of conversation, some of the polarizing sort for next holiday season: The British actress is shooting “The Great Gatsby” as imagined by Baz Luhrmann.

Yes, that Baz Luhrmann, who modernized “Romeo and Juliet” and brought the flash to period Paris in “Moulin Rouge" -- and who will have all eyes on him as he brings his sensibility to the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic.

Mulligan, who plays the iconic Daisy Buchanan in the film, said she feels her own pressure to perform. “It's very nerve-racking,” the actress told 24 Frames by phone from Australia, where she is shooting the movie. “I know how much the book means, especially in America. And everyone has their own view on what the book means, which makes it even more nerve-racking.”

The story of Eggs west and east is also getting a 3-D treatment, which Luhrmann and Leonardo DiCaprio (who plays Jay Gatsby) say will give the film the depth of a stage play. (Luhrmann is one of the new wave of auteurs to embrace the format; Martin Scorsese does it in this weekend’s “Hugo.”)

Fitzgerald’s “Gatsby,” which of course tells of Nick Carraway’s sojourn with the wealthy in 1920s Long Island, has plenty to say about class and American gilded eras. That gives it a lot of resonance in the post-Occupy Wall Street world.

Luhrmann has said he wants to tease out the modern parallels, and Mulligan verified he'll be doing just that. “Baz does really like,” she said, “to connect the past and the present.”